What will be our 2018 Hindi Word of the Year? Help Oxford Dictionaries choose.

New Delhi: Following the success of our inaugural Hindi Word of the Year in 2017, Oxford Dictionaries is now calling on Hindi speakers across the country to help choose a Hindi Word of the Year for 2018. The Hindi Word of the Year will be a word or expression that has attracted a great deal of interest over the last 12 months. The chosen word should reflect the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of the year. It is not necessarily a new word, but should be one that is strongly linked somehow to 2018.

Aadhaar was chosen as the Hindi Word of the Year in 2017 People are invited to submit suggestions on the Hindi Living Dictionaries site at: https://hi.oxforddictionaries.com/hindi-word-of-the-year

Submissions can be made between 27th November and 9th December 2018.

Following the public suggestions, the Word of the Year will be chosen by the Hindi Dictionaries team at Oxford University Press along with an advisory panel of language experts who each bring a unique perspective. Our panel for 2018 are:

· Namita Gokhale – writer, publisher and festival director. She is the author of 16 works of fiction and non-fiction, and co-founder and co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival and Mountain Echoes, the Bhutan Literature Festival

Sivaramakrishnan Venkateswaran, Managing Director, Oxford University Press India, said: “Last year, we launched the Oxford Hindi Word of the Year and received an excellent response, both in terms of numbers and the vast variety of words that were submitted as entries. We are delighted to invite suggestions, for the Hindi Word of the Year 2018 – words that have resonated with Hindi speakers over the course of the last twelve months.” He added: “We are committed to supporting initiatives that help to grow interest in local languages – this is reflected in OUP’s robust publishing programme wherein we publish language books and bilingual learning material in 12 Indian languages.”

Kritika Agrawal, Language Champion for Oxford’s Hindi Living Dictionary, said: “The launch of Oxford University Press’s first ‘Hindi Word of the Year’ campaign in 2017 was a milestone in the global recognition of Hindi as one of the major languages of the world. As a member of the jury to select the first Hindi word of the year, I was privy to the enthusiasm with which large sections of people across India reached out to share their entries. This was a strong proof of the reach, relevance and popularity of the language!

I was honored to have been associated with this campaign last year and am very excited to be a part of the second edition of this annual event. It is my hope that the contribution of all the organizers, jury. members and participants will prove successful in bringing Hindi language into greater focus globally.”

The 2018 Word of the Year will be announced in January 2019 at the Jaipur Literary Festival.